LABOUR IN HUNT FOR NEW ELECTION HOPEFUL

LABOUR’S prospective parliamentary candidate for Wokingham has quit after accusing party colleagues in Northampton of “bully boy and Stalinist style antics”.

Paul Concannon, Labour councillor for Northampton Borough Council, resigned from the party last week following a tense council meeting where he said he had “a gutful of a few warped and malicious” fellow councillors who, he claimed, had pursued personal vendettas against him since he won his seat in the borough in May 2003.

He said Labour members in Northampton Borough were

“two-faced” and said backstabbing within the Labour party was not the sort of thing he had signed up for.

Cllr Concannon was selected as a Parliamentary candidate by the Labour party last summer, and his resignation, with a General Election widely anticipated on Thursday, May 5, has sparked an urgent hunt for a replacement.

Wokingham’s Labour party will now have to select and then put forward a member who they want to challenge Wokingham MP John Redwood for the seat.

Keith Wilson, chairman of Wokingham’s Labour party, is expected to hold a meeting this week calling those who want to run for the Wokingham seat to come forward.

Councillors from other local Labour parties in England are also expected to fight for the right to contest the Conservative stronghold which Mr Redwood has held since 1987.

Over the next three weeks, Labour leaders at the party’s headquarters in Millbank, London, will be interviewing a list of candidates, including the candidate from Wokingham’s Labour party, before compiling a shortlist.

All short-listed candidates will be vetted by Labour’s National Executive Committee, which oversees policy-making and consults on party membership, before making a final decision.

Cllr Concannon, 31, has said he will be an independent councillor in Northampton Borough.

He said he was disappointed not to be standing for the Wokingham seat in this year’s general election but hoped a local Labour member would be chosen in his place.

He told The Times: “I decided to stand as parliamentary candidate for Wokingham as I wanted to get some experience and stand in a seat where I knew I was not likely to win.

“I do not want any part of party politics any more although I still support the Labour Government and what they are trying to achieve.”

Susan Brown, spokeswoman for the Labour party in the South East region, told The Times a new candidate to challenge Mr Redwood would be announced by the Labour party within the next three weeks.

She said Cllr Concannon’s resignation had left the party with less time than it would have preferred to find a new candidate but confirmed the party would contest the seat in the General Election.